From coal miner's daughter to country music icon, Loretta Lynn's unlikely path to success
is truly a rags-to-riches story. But the road to superstardom wasn't always easy.
Loretta Lynn grew up in the tiny, remote coal-mining town of Butcher Hollow,
Kentucky. Butcher Hollow is an unincorporated community in the town of Van Lear, Kentucky.
Per the Van Lear Historical Society, Van Lear once boasted five coal mines on which
the town's economy was completely dependent. Coal mining towns in the Appalachian region,
including Van Lear, were typically owned by a coal company who owned most of the
buildings and dwellings in the town and often paid miners in company currency.
The Kentucky Coal Education Project claims that coal companies controlled workers by offering
very low pay and preventing workers from unionizing. This kept the region in extreme
poverty — including Lynn's family. After a peak in the middle of the 20th century,
coal mines began to close, and coal jobs plummeted. Now tourism,
partially boosted by Lynn's fame, helps keep Van Lear afloat.
Loretta Lynn grew up in a one-room
cabin and didn't have much of an education. The coal industry began to seriously decline in 1948,
leaving behind a shocking illiteracy rate in an area that was already known for its extreme
poverty. In her autobiography, Coal Miner's Daughter, Lynn describes the hard times that
she assumed every family went through. There were winters when food was scarce,
and she never had beef until after she was married. Lynn slept on the floor with her
seven siblings until she was 9, when her parents bought her a bed and moved her to their room.
Lynn's fear of poverty followed her for the rest of her life. She wrote in her
autobiography that she didn't like going to places where there was a lot of poverty,
although she'd never trade her childhood memories. But despite all of Lynn's success,
the fear of losing her money never left her. She wrote in her book:
"When you've been poor, you always feel in the back of
your mind that you're going to be poor again."
Loretta Lynn was the second-oldest of eight children, and helped raise her siblings in the
cabin on a hill in Butcher Holler, as she sings in "Coal Miner's Daughter." In her autobiography,
Lynn wrote that her main job was to take care of her youngest siblings:
"I'd sit on the porch swing and rock them babies and sing at the top of my voice."
"So that's when you began to sing?"
"Uh-huh. Just when I was a little girl."
Her father would often complain about her loud singing, claiming that she would ruin
the hearing of her younger brother with her strong voice. By performing for her siblings,
however, Lynn gained an audience. Lynn said that one neighbor made her proud when he told
her that she had a lovely voice, and that he listened to her singing while he worked outside.
Loretta Lynn claimed to have married Oliver "Doolittle" Lynn at the age of 13, although
reporters from the Associated Press discovered that Lynn was born in 1932 rather than 1935,
which would have made her 15 at the time of her marriage. Until 2018, Kentucky was a state
where minors were allowed to marry, depending on circumstances and meeting specific conditions.
Child marriages like Lynn's were common in Appalachia in the early 20th century.
Lynn wrote in Coal Miner's Daughter that her husband, Doolittle, pretty much raised
her since she was so young. Lynn acknowledged that she was little more than a child herself
when she was married and had her first baby. Doolittle often treated her like the child she
was. In her autobiography, Lynn wrote that when Doolittle first courted her, he gave her a doll,
telling her that by the following Christmas they'd be married and have a live doll of their own. Four
months after the pair married, Lynn found out she was pregnant with her first child.
When Oliver "Doolittle" Lynn married Loretta,
Loretta's father made Doolittle promise to not beat her and to not take her too far away
from her family, according to Loretta's autobiography. Doolittle promptly broke
both promises by beating her and moving her to Washington state. As Taste of Country puts it,
"Doo was an alcoholic who routinely cheated on Lynn and physically abused her."
Despite their tumultuous marriage, Loretta credited Doolittle with encouraging her
to become a star. According to AP, Doolittle bought Loretta her first guitar and encouraged
her to sing in public, kicking off one of the strongest careers in country music.
"If Doo hadn't bought you that guitar?"
"I wouldn't be sitting here today."
Although Lynn credited Doolittle with starting her career, she admitted that times were often
tough for the couple. The relationship between Doolittle and Loretta became the subject of
public fascination after the 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter, starring Tommy Lee Jones
and Sissy Spacek, brought the couple to the big screen. When writing her autobiography,
Lynn questioned how much she should share about her relationship with her husband. Doolittle,
however, felt that the truth should be told, and as the crooner recalled in her book, he told her,
"Hell's fire, Loretta, just tell the story the way it happened. I've always said you
should never try to cover up things. Look, we're not perfect. Let's not pretend we are."
Doolittle died in 1996 after 48 years of marriage to Loretta. On his deathbed,
Loretta comforted him the best way she knew how — by singing "Wouldn't It Be
Great?," a song she wrote about the many struggles in their relationship.
"Why didn't you just divorce him?"
"I loved him."
Loretta Lynn had four children by the time she was 22 years old — and her first was born when
she was just 16. In Coal Miner's Daughter, Lynn says that she got a diaphragm after that in hopes
that she would not have any more children. But in 1963, while she was in her early 30s,
Lynn was given shocking news: she was pregnant with twins. Lynn was devastated — she was just
beginning to make money from singing, and she cried throughout the pregnancy,
although she describes the day her twins were born as a happy one.
Lynn was not a big fan of pregnancy and welcomed birth control — so much, in fact, that she wrote
her 1975 song "The Pill" about family planning. Lynn claims in her autobiography that if the pill
had existed in her youth, she would have jumped on taking it, as she spent much of her early marriage
pregnant and poor. Lynn was a new face for birth control — an outspoken, loving mother of six who
wanted control over her life. The lyrics to her oft-banned ballad to birth control say it all:
"The feelin' good comes easy / now since I've got the pill."
On her personal website, Loretta
Lynn claimed that she worked her fingers to the bone in the early days of her marriage, writing:
"Before I was singing, I cleaned house; I took in laundry; I picked berries. I worked seven
days a week. I was a housewife and mother for 15 years before I was an entertainer. And it
wasn't like being a housewife today. [...] That's what's real. I know how to survive."
Lynn wrote in her autobiography that growing up in such a remote area made her shy:
"Holler kids were so bashful that they'd run and hide if they had company coming ... If
a stranger asked you questions, you'd clam up until you knew his business."
Part of the reason for this shyness, according to Lynn,
was a fear of revenue officers who might be looking for moonshine. But
it was also just a result of living in the middle of nowhere. Lynn claims that a car
hadn't ever even come down her road until her husband drove up one day in his Jeep.
Loretta Lynn suffered a shocking
blow when her favorite child, Jack Benny Lynn, tragically died at the young age of 34
in 1984. According to PBS, Jack drowned on his Hurricane Mills property while trying to cross
the Duck River on his horse, who survived the accident. Jack, a blacksmith and horse trainer,
was a competent rider and the accident came as a shock to Loretta. Mooney Lynn gave Loretta
the news while she was in the hospital due to exhaustion from her grueling tour schedule.
She found out on July 25, 1984, after his body was found about three miles from his house,
according to The New York Times. Lynn adored Jack,
writing in her autobiography that he was the child that she felt the most sentimental about,
and that seeing him upset made her upset. USA Today reports that Lynn lost another child in
2013 when her daughter Betty Sue died from emphysema. In 2016, she suffered another
loss with the death of her grandson, Jeffery Allen, who died unexpectedly at the age of 47.
In an interview with PRI's Studio360, Jack White says that Loretta Lynn told him that she had "14
songs" banned by country radio, including her controversial song about birth control,
"The Pill." According to People, "The Pill" was banned by over 60 radio stations across the U.S,
despite all the buzz that emerged around the track in pop culture.
"She was breaking down barriers and walls for women left and right and
doing it right under everyone's noses." The ban likely gave Lynn a boost in sales,
and the singer managed to turn her straight-talking image into a major
career. In a 2021 interview with Parade, Lynn opened up about her controversial music,
revealing that she didn't try to intentionally aggravate people with her music. She said:
"I just write what I feel, what is going on with me and my life. It just happened
that a lot of other women felt the same. I would never set out to write
something just for it to shock someone; I am not that clever. It's always been
about truth and if that means radio wants to ban it, well that's their problem."
"Everybody had to play it, you know, when it was on the charts."
Throughout her stunningly
long career, Loretta Lynn remained the undisputed queen of country music. In 2021,
she released a new album, Still Woman Enough, which is named after her 2002
memoir. The record is her 50th studio album, and was welcomed with good reviews.
In 2017, Lynn suffered from a stroke, but that didn't stop her from continuing to sing.
Lynn accomplished incredible things in her long career. She sold more than 45 million records,
won numerous Grammys, was the CMA's first female Entertainer of the Year,
and won the CMT Artist of a Lifetime award. But there was more she wanted
to do. Her goals were best summed up in her declaration to Parade in 2021:
"I hope I can write a song right up until the end."
On October 4, 2022,
it was reported that Loretta Lynn died at the age of 90. Her family released a statement that read:
"Our precious mom, Loretta Lynn, passed away peacefully this morning,
October 4th, in her sleep at home in her beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills."
Tributes began pouring in across social media. The Country Music Association tweeted,
"We are heartbroken to learn about the passing of [Loretta Lynn], the Coal Miner's Daughter.
She inspired generations of female musicians & has forever left a mark on Country Music's history."
Although "Coal Miner's Daughter" will forever be associated with Lynn, the song only spent
one week at the top of the charts when it was first released. When the biographical film of
the same name came out in 1980, the country singer's popularity was at an all-time high.
Rolling Stone named it her signature tune among the list of her essential songs, along with
other favorites like "I'm a Honky Tonk Girl" and "You Ain't Woman Enough (to Take My Man)." From
humble roots to worldwide acclaim, musical icon Loretta Lynn lived a full and fascinating life.